Dame Sharon White, Chairwoman for the John Lewis Partnership has urged the British Government to get the over 50s back to work in a bid to solve today’s wage inflation crisis and replenish the current shortage of skilled workers being experienced across the UK.

In May, we reported that there were more opportunities than candidates for the first time since records began meaning organisations across the UK are facing a severe talent shortage with millions of vacancies and no candidates to fill them. Bringing professionals out of retirement could be the answer.

Dame Sharon White said: “There is not a business in the UK that is not struggling to recruit at the moment” and figures from the Office of National Statistics might support her theory that reversing retirement can help.

According to the ONS, the number of economically inactive people, classified as those without a job and not seeking to work, is higher than before COVID and the most popular reason given, is retirement.

By encouraging older professionals back into the office, we could see less unfilled vacancies, more productivity and a steadying of wages that can in-turn reduce inflation. This might also be something we need to think about more seriously.

We recently attended a Family Office event where the keynote speaker offered his predictions for the year 2050. His Family Office is working backwards to ensure as a team, they are investing in the areas today that will make profit and have purpose tomorrow.

The secret to his time-traveling ability was demographics and how population trends paint a picture of the future which, when delving into the details, might sound quite alarming. He offered a conclusion that an ageing population paired with the trend of having less children means we will have an older population of people unable to care for themselves and a declining younger population to keep the economy turning. His answer to this problem was global mobility and the freedom of trade.

He looked at population trends on a global scale and compared this to advanced and advancing economies with the USA leading the ‘advanced countries’ list and ‘advancing countries’ consisting of the likes of India. The USA while topping the first list is also the most under populated country in the world when it comes to under-25 year olds and when contrasting this to ‘advancing countries’ such as India, which is one of 9 countries to boast 50% of the world’s population growth, the speaker emphasised the importance of global mobility and the freedom of trade.

In his words, it is a case of “knowledge capital vs. human capital.” While we can simplify this message as ensuring global talent is met with global opportunity, Brexit has made the process of hiring international talent tremendously tricky and so moving talent from advancing countries to advanced countries to fill the array of opportunities currently available is not as easy as it might seem.

The short-term solution is reversing-retirement, a sentiment clearly echoed by Dame White.

The speaker offered his take on why an older population seeking retirement or already in retirement must upskill, continually learn and return to the workforce in order to fill a gap, mentor the new generation of workers and boost the economy like they have done before.

We have seen a lot of Family Offices reach out in a quest to find senior and retired professionals to join their Family Office in an advisory capacity to add wisdom and fuel growth and so clearly, at least from the Family Office perspective, the appetite is there.

Do you agree that a reversal of retirement is the answer?